Difference between revisions of "Team:NAWI Graz/Collaborations"
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Revision as of 14:51, 1 November 2017
COLLABORATIONS
The iGEM Team NAWI_Graz looked for different possibilities to collaborate with other teams. These ranged from simple e-mail
communication to learn more about the competition and the support provided by iGEM, online discussions in
the field of security, material support for other teams with our own constructs, and the development of a
software to improve our robot algorithm and therefore giving other teams the possibility to support us from
their own location. They all looked much more difficult and complicated than we originally thought, but they
all helped us to realise our project in this form.
European Meet Up
From the team TU Delft we have been noticed by an e-mail that they will organize a European
Meet up. The idea of an earlier, smaller version of the Giant Jamboree in Europe excited the whole team and
we decided to send 7 people to the Netherlands to get in touch with other iGEM teams. Due to the Meet-up we
also gained our first experiences in poster presentations. With lots of euphoria and motivation we enjoyed the
various lectures at the TU Delft. They arranged excursions in Delft and Rotterdam, (lovely Pannenkoekenboot,
really delicious) and above all the large poster presentations of the different teams. It was a great opportunity
to meet other iGEM teams and to improve our skills by presenting our project to them. The send summary of all
presented posters helped us to find and rework our own poster design for Boston.
General Support
Already in Delft, we have communicated more intensively with the team
TU_Darmstadt, because it has been shown that as a relatively fresh Grazer team, the 3rd at all, we had less
information than thought about the competition and standardized support of long-standing partners of the iGEM
Foundation. As an example they have drawn our attention to the free sequencing of MycroSynth. In addition, we
wanted to form an even closer cooperation by demonstrating a degradation product from their experiments and thus
directly prove that their experimental setup and our construct function. For this, there were video conferences,
but the plan was rejected because the substrate amounts would not have been high enough to activate our promoter.
Although no physical exchange has taken place, we would like to express our gratitude for the willingness to
establish a new team in the competition.
Online Discussion about Safety
As part of the preparations for our lab work, we have seen the call for an online discussion of the team Uppsala on the
official iGEM Collaboration page. After the subsequent contact, we got seats in the session about Genetic Engineering
with special attention to safety. The questions were focused on the areas of "uncontrolled dissemination" and
"harmful abuse of our openly accessible GMO". Together with the teams ETH_Zurich, UiOslo_Norway, Lund, Groningen
and the hosting team Uppsala
we determined whether and how we could assume our GMOs behaviour in the wild and whether we could imagine any
way possible harmful misuse of our GMO. The results of this discussion helped us to complete our
Safety Form.
Vid. 1: Our Team Members Tony and Tino at the Safety Video Conference hosted by the iGEM Team Uppsala
Interactive Maze Design
After we announced on the official iGEM Collaboration site to help us improving our robot algorithm by being part of our
obligate group of beta testers for our online maze design software, the iGEM Team Groningen
contacted us. The first mazes of the team, as simple as they were designed, could not be solved by
our robot.
Fig. 1: The first maze design with our online maze design software. Designed by the iGEM Team Groningen
Due to these feedbacks we have extended the code of the program significantly and found a way to insert a coherent storage
possibility, which allows the robot to escape much better from angled corners again and find the end of the maze.
After sending the link to the updated version, our friends from Groningen sent us several new designs, which
were all solved by the robot.
Fig. 2: Maze design with extended code
INSA-UPS_France contacted us some time later to test the labyrinth design software
too. Using their highly creative approach to design several mazes, we were able to correct mistakes and validate
our results even more.
Fig. 3: Maze design by INSA-UPS_France
Support by sending our Promotor Construct
We reached out for SVCE_Chennai after reading their collaboration proposal on the
iGEM Collaborations page. We realized we had many similarities in our project as both of us were working
on pH as well as temperature regulatory systems and the alkaline inducible promotor was actually the
same, alx. A skype call between both teams, which gave us a chance to interact and express any difficulties
we had, was organised. Since they had some issues with changing pH in their medium, we helped them out
by giving them some useful suggestions, like our protocol about what base we use on the concret amount of it to raise the neutral pH of LB and M9 media to 8,5 to induce the promoter. Since they had some amplification issues with their gBlock, we
also shipped them our alx gBlock so that they could work with it. At the end of the summer, they send us their data about how the promoteractivity increased with the pH and as we had kind of the same results, we came to the conclusion our experiments were successfull.
Augmented Reality at the Giant Jamboree
After seeing the post of the iGEM team Franconia on the official Collaboration Site,
and declining it as a very creative, interesting and amusing one, we decided to support them. They organise
an augmented reality game for smartphones with the help of QR codes distributed throughout the Giant
Jamboree. A "plague" breaks out at the event and the QR codes represent either "cure" or infect the respective
scanning smartphone. The goal of the game is that at the end of the conference all virus outbreaks are
cured. This game can create a very special component of the Giant
Jamboree 2017 and this is why we want to be part of it.
